Posted on 02/20/2016 8:53:13 AM PST by Smittie
I helped make the instrumentation radars that measured the stealthiness of these aircraft, so they do show up on a sufficiently wide-band radar system.
Combat mode would not be so easy to see, and would drop off the screens.
Essentially, drop tanks may be doing that now.
Tracking an F-22 is one thing. Locking a weapon onto it is something else altogether. Last I checked, fire control radar range is a fraction of the range of tracking radar.
The F22 in basically reduces the range of the radar trying to track it. This leaves gaps that the F22 can exploit. If they had external tanks the F22 becomes like any other plane.
If it were me, I would always leave the F22 visible to radar unless I didn’t want to be seen. Leaving it visible makes it that much harder build a database of images.
In effect make it as expensive as possible to track.
Nice analysis. Raptor in lulling more for later: “We’re able to track it, we dot see it, must not be there.” Wrong.
I wonder if conformal fuel tanks were developed that would increase the range without limiting the stealth capabilities.
Stealth was a one trick pony, and is hopelessly doomed. Radar sees it all, even if all it sees is a hole in the sky where a perfect stealth plane is. “Seeing” is simply a matter of applying enough processing power to what the radar is seeing.
So we are trying to fight exponentially growing computing power that explodes continuously, with a piece of airframe hardware we will can update every 35 years.
Very true. OTOH, stealth reduces detection range and the ability to track so that a stealth aircraft (and I use this as a relative term) can exploit the gaps in a radar chain.
Surfaces and Gaps — Maneuver warfare.
Next step -- optical or quantum computers. But I don't know enough to know if those architectures are well suited or the algorithms used in signal processing; nor enough about the algorithms to know how they are at teasing out true positive signals from very noisy data.
The big red flag in believability is why would they tell all this when it would be more valuable to the PRC to just use it.
Keep those exterior fuel tanks until hostilities commence, so they think they are good to go on the tracking. Then lose them. Or let them decoy while the F-117s do the dirty work.
Radar is like a flashlight in a field. You can see the flashlight coming long before it can zero in on you. Standoff HARMs mean never having to say “oops”!
Well.... those F117s have been out of service for almost a decade.
“That being said, even combat-configured F-22s are not invisible to enemy radar, contrary to popular belief. “
RCS of a bumble-bee is darned near invisible.
Stealth tracking was possible in the 1980’s. As others have pointed out, guiding a missile to it is the more difficult thing to do.
With low frequency radars, you can see the aircraft "somewhere in that direction", but you can't tell precisely where and certainly not how many if flying close.
So, the defender against them in a "strike" scenario ends up shooting at air. Even the terminal engagement radars of sophisticated missiles cannot see close enough to hit the target.
And in an air-to-air engagement (that's what the F-22 does, almost exclusively) the other aircraft cannot see them at all.
So, when you have something that works, you abandon it? What a country! (in my best Yacov Smirnoff accent)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.